Profile elements, in particular those made of carbon fiber reinforced material, are used in production of aircraft. To manufacture such profile elements, it is known to place an element pre-cut from a stacking of a plurality of layers of pre-impregnated fibers and usually preheated into a mold and press this element into a mold cavity to form the profile element with the cross-section required. After curing of thermosetting or thermoplastic resin used to impregnate the fibers the profile element and removing the element from the mold is ready for use. However, such a discontinuous process of manufacturing is time-consuming and, in addition, the profile element produced might be somewhat defective. The reason therefore is to be seen in that the layers of the stacking do have all the same lengths perpendicular to the longitudinal direction of the stacking and need to slide with respect to each other when the material is deformed. However, in many cases the edges in the mold and the engagement of the mold elements in these edge areas with the stacking material prevent such sliding so that within the material wrinkles develop which reduce the quality of the material.
In earlier European Patent Application No. 13168504-2 (Assignee: Airbus Operations GmbH), filed on May 21, 2013, the contents of which are incorporated by reference herein, a method for continuously producing essentially Ω-shaped profile elements from a multi-layer stacking of pre-impregnated fibers is described, wherein at the beginning of the process the stacking is produced and then such continuous stacking is fed through several processing stations, like a heating station, a pre-forming station, a further heating station and then through a forming station. This forming station comprises a wheel with a mold recess in its outer circumference and further comprises a plurality of forming elements arranged adjacent to the wheel to press parts of the pre-formed stacking, successively into the mold recess. At the end of this forming process a predetermined length of the formed material is cut off.